FP Staff Conference Call #1

[USHost247]

As some members have requested, that we disclose the topics that we have discussed during our staff conference calls to enable the community to assist us in moving in the correct direction, down below you can find some of the topics that we have discussed. Do take note, that these are notes taken from the call and not guarantees.

High Priority

1. Swag with the webmaster's site/logo. Contests that allows the members to win swag that can be delivered with their own logos and brands. Everyone loves free stuff.
   1. We are looking at doing contests and other similar events that allow the community to win prizes where the staff will pay for the member to receive "swag" (wearable items) with their own custom logos, instead of just FP swag.
2. New moderation guidelines and procedures.
   1. We are rewriting our community team member guidelines and switching from our old standards of issuing PM reminders, tracking via a topic in staff forums, and trying to remember how many warnings each member has had to the built in system within xenforo.
3. Resources' tutorials or disable addon for now.
   1. Staff team has decided to keep the resources plugin enabled and focus on adding fresh content that is beneficial to the community. Feel free to recommend content that you would like to see or read about!
4. Paid posting packagers.
   1. @Cammeh agreed during the conference that package staff will be paid $0.05 per post and $0.07 per topic that is created for our wonderful community members. This has been implemented!

Medium Priority

1. Site battles to a 30 day restriction. Reboot site battle in January to restart the leaderboard and to give a bigger meaning to leaderboard. 30 day restriction to give other site owners a chance to have their topics seen.
   1. During the call, staff all agreed that site battles are pointless at this moment and were thinking of ways to make the leadership have a meaning and some excitement for actually moving up the ranks during the year. One thing that is bringing down the value of the site battles is the constant same websites battling and no one is caring to vote or participate anymore. To combat this, we will be implementing a 30 day restriction after a member has battled, allowing other members to reach the spotlight as well. We do not want to interrupt the current progress in the site battles that users have achieved this year, so we are looking to debut this change at the beginning of 2020. We will be discussing other events and rewards that can be implemented into the site battle program. Feel free to cast in some suggestions!
2. Site Battle Manager. Member that manages site battles and updates leaderboard.
   1. Staff discussed the possibilities of adding a role of site battle manager. This would be an individual who takes pride in the site battles and would be managing the leaderboard and adding the polls, but would not have moderator abilities.
3. Consider instant-messaging on FP (IRC, Discord, etc.) Team agreed that adding discord plugin on sidebar would be beneficial and would bring some life to discord channel. Cleaning up of the discord server will begin soon.
   1. Staff discussed cleaning up the discord server, as some members want to post as well as have instant chat availability. To support this, we could add discord to our sidebar, which would show live statistics of the FP discord server, and would assist in bringing activity to both platforms.
4. Referrals and referral contest with about FP page as landing page. Offering swag gear as rewards for winning referral contests and in general referring members.
   1. Referrals are always the best members. These are people who are referred by someone who enjoys FP already! Word of mouth is the best advertisement. As we know, people love free gifts. We could do referral contests weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. which would have swag gear as rewards. Items that have your own forums logo, phrase, or whatever you like...we will just foot the bill for you and ship it right to your door!

Low Priority

1. Build social networking. Offer social networking services to build likes, shares, friends, followers.
   1. Staff discussed the change in the platforms that the new age has brought upon us. We don't really have a direction in this type of services, so we would like to hear any and all feedback in this area. Is there certain services that FP could help you with or provide to you that involves the social media platforms? Let us know what you think!
2. Offering more value to FP$. Considered low priority at the moment until suggestions arise on how to increase value of FP cash.
   1. We all know that the current value of the FP cash is very little, or virtually worthless at the moment. We are looking at ways to get rid of a large quantity of FP cash, which would begin rising the value. Without a reset, what suggestions do you as a community have that would assist in this goal? Would it be rewards that are high value in trade for FP cash? Do we ultimately buy the FP from you just so we can destroy it? What suits you, the member, the best?

There it is folks, the first conference call for FP staff. Another call will be coming up within the next week. Pitch in your suggestions of what you want us to focus on as high priority and what you believe can wait to be worked on. I will attempt to provide conference meeting minutes as follow-ups to each category that is discussed so that we can stay on track with our goals and not drift too far.

 

[Deleted member 7467]

Keying in on one item, monetizing FP cash could be highly motivating but not sure how sustainable it would be. If it remained long term, it could drive up traffic resulting in a large return long term but that’s a big risk.

 

[Thomasss]

Thaaats what I am talking about. I like the swag idea with our own logos! That’s awesome!
Also, I’m very happy to see the moderation guidelines changing. The current procedures definitely needed some updating; new ones that allow CMTs to be more involved in the moderation processes!

 

[USHost247]

Keying in on one item, monetizing FP cash could be highly motivating but not sure how sustainable it would be. If it remained long term, it could drive up traffic resulting in a large return long term but that’s a big risk.

All the better for us to kick it into gear and get it fixed eh? We will be monitoring the cash that we pay out and will bring up things that can be done to equal it out. Also, for the FP cash rewards, it would only be for while our goal is to be lowering the amount of FP cash in circulation. Not permanent.

 

[Page]

Good to see some major changes to move with the future as FP still has old ways to what was added back ten years ago. Gootamovwe with the trends you know. Might see far more people joining the PT now since it's paid option LOL but then it's low compared to what people offing on fiverr.. But aren't a big deal as long as it works

 

[USHost247]

Thaaats what I am talking about. I like the swag idea with our own logos! That’s awesome!
Also, I’m very happy to see the moderation guidelines changing. The current procedures definitely needed some updating; new ones that allow CMTs to be more involved in the moderation processes!

We thought users would like their own custom swag! This could become very useful for users that want items that have their own logos on them. Maybe we could do such things for FP cash in the near future? Just a thought I had. It would most definitely get FP cash out of rotation, which is what we need in order to make FP cash worth more.

 

[Chase.]

Good news. All the best in moving forward.

 

[Van1lla ™]

Why are you resisting the reset option for the FP cash. I think it would take too long to bring it down and considering it’s basically an inflated currency, you have no way of bringing the value down akin to what governments do to stop inflation occurring.

 

[USHost247]

Why are you resisting the reset option for the FP cash. I think it would take too long to bring it down and considering it’s basically an inflated currency, you have no way of bringing the value down akin to what governments do to stop inflation occurring.

We have went through this before with asking the community if a reset was best and there was a large amount of pushback.

 

[JoelR]

Good to see some major changes to move with the future as FP still has old ways to what was added back ten years ago. Gootamovwe with the trends you know. Might see far more people joining the PT now since it's paid option LOL but then it's low compared to what people offing on fiverr.. But aren't a big deal as long as it works

They haven't fundamentally changed anything at all with their community strategy. And if anything, I'm not sure they've fully thought through some of these suggestions on their existing strategy:

- They're going to block recurring users from participating in site battles. Those are, like, the only people who participate to begin with. They're not meaningfully changing the purpose or intent of the site battles, which means it's going to attract the same low value users and same low value battles. But now it'll be once a month instead of every couple of days. Participation is going to drop off a cliff, and for what gain?

- Swag for referrals. Sounds good, until someone has to pay for it. Has anyone explored a realistic budget for dropshipping gifts? Let's say it costs $35 for a custom hat, including shipping, and you want to hand this out once a week (which means you earn one new user a week via referral). That's $140 / month and $1,680 / year. If you're going to be throwing that kind of money to gain 50 new users, there are more efficient ways of spending.

- they have no idea what to do about social media, even though this is arguably the most important growth area for traffic behind organic search.

- they have no idea what to do about their site currency, which is inflated beyond usefulness. As a real message to Webmasters: if you're going to be installing a gamification / rewards system which serves as a core part of your community mission, then make it a useful reward. Otherwise it's not a reward, it's another feature.

- On a final note, they listed high priority for the most trivial of items like moderation (sure, get it fixed) and extra sections (sure, keep or lose them - it doesn't matter) and paid posting (sure, keep doing the same low value thing you've been doing). The medium priority covers site battles (which nobody cares about) and custom swag (which nobody has a budget for). Unfortunately, out of all these priorities, not a single one had been a deep and meaningful change to how the site will attract, retain, and empower its users.

 

[Jon]

I'm happy to see a public display of our intentions moving forward with Forum Promotion. We're aware that transparency between the staff and the community is crucial when it comes to the development of FP. The discussions amongst the community have proven to be useful when it comes to implementing future changes with our members in mind. Learning from the constructive feedback which has been provided has been helpful during our staff conferences as it allows us to consider our member's thoughts as well as our own while setting a priority for each.

We have a few steps ahead of us until all of the building blocks are in place, however, we're sure that once complete we'll have satisfied the general desire of the FP community. I look forward to growing together as a community and am excited about the future of change.

Once again, thank you to all of our great members who have been patient with us during this transition and who have respectfully provided their feedback. We appreciate you!

 

[Van1lla ™]

We have went through this before with asking the community if a reset was best and there was a large amount of pushback.

Just had a look through the solved archive just to look at dates. It was brought up in March and in that thread @Cammeh said they had a big chat in July 2018. Now I know he said no originally to it being reset, but considering all the changes you are planning on making, and assistance you ask from the community, maybe it’s time to re think the reset? Come January 2020 when you want to implement some changes, it would be a year and half since the last major discussion with it.

People don’t want to have it reset where they have racked up 10,000+ that will never get spent! And where you now only have one service that uses it, not including exchanges, it just doesn’t get spent. It worked years ago as you had 4/5 times as many services which you would remember.

 

[Deleted member 7467]

Resets are tough. If you had hundreds of active users, I would be more hesitant to try a reset. However, given the current environment, a reset will get the results faster and allow for rebuilding. Yes, people will get pissed but people will always gripe. Make users have a reason to start earning FP again. The package service can be more competitive, community engagement events can be started heavy and strong making participation more warranted, the community will have a reason to try to earn FP. Let the users who do actively contribute get one free package out of the reset and provide a smal bonus for the first week after to allow people to quickly earn a bit back to get it back into circulation. With the package team getting real cash, huge amounts of FP shouldn’t be going out in circulation so it’ll be more scarce overall.

Run a report of who has what now in case it doesn’t work, give people a grace period to request their FP be restored, and keep moving forward (back up plan).

Change the PT to slow ordering through a shop app, offer basic packages for FP and offer extended packages for a premium cost. Money can be handled through FP which cuts risk of dealing with unknown individuals while also ensuring quality content. Mark these premium packages up enough to be be able to pay packagers but also get a small return to put towards annual costs. Also make the premium packages worth purchasing in the first place by providing like activity packages or moderation packages.
Actually pay Malcolm or someone in his position and offer premium webmaster services at a discount. I’m not talking full website design but simple items priced accordingly. FP could even expand into a small hosting website perhaps.

Just a few thoughts dictated on my phone. If they seem out of order, I apologize.

 

[Bluezone777]

All change has a lot of push-back associated with it. One only needs to open up a US history book to see examples of it. The real question is what reasons and motivations are behind the push-back to see if there concerns are justified or not. I imagine a lot of the push back is focused on self interest rather than the community as a whole. A member gets the privilege of seeing things only from their own self interested point of view but you as a leader do not get that privilege. You have to look at things from the bigger picture of the community as a whole and make the decisions that benefit the most not any one person or group of people.

After a reset, it would be easier to implement a FP cash for USD transaction system to discourage hoarding and push people to circulate FP cash rather than letting it pile up which in turn devalues it and drives the viewpoint of it down to being what it currently is today. the value of FP cash is defined by what people think it's worth and right now you likely couldn't find anyone who would claim it's worth much of anything right now.

If you were to go through with such a system, the numbers would have be worked out to make it meaningful for the customer while being sustainable for you to consistently offer it to the community. Doing it now with the way FP currency is would be impossible as everyone is at a different starting point in terms of amount of FP cash on hand and there would be no way to set the numbers to where it would be meaningful for the member and sustainable to you.

 

[Deleted member 29780]

I know some of you guys are arguing saying we should build our social media presence but I do agree with you I just believe we should be focusing on what we have as a community and our current membership to encourage the community to continue to come back and participate. Now, perhaps we could bring on a social media person to build our media presence so that at least that end doesn't die. While the rest of the team focuses on what's inside. I do hope that this makes sense.

 

[JoelR]

I know some of you guys are arguing saying we should build our social media presence but I do agree with you I just believe we should be focusing on what we have as a community and our current membership to encourage the community to continue to come back and participate. Now, perhaps we could bring on a social media person to build our media presence so that at least that end doesn't die. While the rest of the team focuses on what's inside. I do hope that this makes sense.

Normally I would 100% agree with this statsment. Normally, activation of internal members is much easier than onboarding of new users.

But for any outside observer looking at FP who understands community strategy, there's a healthy amount of skepticism of your internal community: For all of the past members who joined, how many are still running successful communities today? My guess is most do not. My guess is that most of the admins who join FP eventually had their site stop. My guess is that your historic audience were casual hobbyists, who weren't serious about community building. My guess is that most of these people have moved on with their lives and their interests.

As such, does it make sense trying to reactivate these legacy members? They might come back out of curiosity, our of a bit of nostalgia, but do you offer them hard, functional value that they need in their current lives?

That strategy only works if you can provide enduring value.

 

[TechWiz18]

I think a big thing that should be considered if we put an actual monetary value on FP$ is how much is earned where in each forum/category and potentially turning off earnings in forums such as forum games if it isn't already.

I also like the idea of having a basic posting package in place that users can purchase with FP$ and the others being premium to help off-set, if not pay for the Package Team.

@Matthew can you clarify what you mean by slow ordering?

 

[Deleted member 7467]

I think a big thing that should be considered if we put an actual monetary value on FP$ is how much is earned where in each forum/category and potentially turning off earnings in forums such as forum games if it isn't already.

I also like the idea of having a basic posting package in place that users can purchase with FP$ and the others being premium to help off-set, if not pay for the Package Team.

@Matthew can you clarify what you mean by slow ordering?

Typo, ordering should be done on an actual order page

 

[TechWiz18]

I can't help but wonder if our current Shop plugin is going to be too limited for real currency purchases as from what I can tell it only does Forum Currency transactions unlike this plugin here. https://xenforo.com/community/resources/xfa-rm-marketplace-shop-xf2.6064/

 

[Joshua Farrell]

The current shop addon that is currently there can be setup to run Paypal, it is just not currently setup to connect it. I've brought it up previously that it could be used, but I usually got a hesitant response about using any extension connected to paypal, other than the member upgrades and the ad addons.